Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!

And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.

In order to make out on this at my hourly rate, I would have to cap my phone time with the company to minutes. Single digit.

It's literally just not worth it. Time is the most finite resource that we all have.

These companies are scum. I don't want to be part of this march to the bottom of caring for your customer. Big companies are also different because of the firmness with which they are locked in to the purchasing infrastructure (among other reasons).